This is the official and genuine blog of the Genuine Faux Farm. We are a small, family farm that focuses on raising certified organic vegetables. We also raise turkeys and chickens and we have raised ducks. Our produce is primarily sold via a farm share CSA program, though you may find our produce elsewhere within 50 miles of the farm. We specialize in heirloom and open-pollinated vegetables and use inter-cropping methods.

Thursday, April 24, 2014

The Oooo Aaaaa! Bird

Every so often something remarkable happens at the farm.

Ok, ok. Many remarkable things happen at the farm. Some of them we take for granted. Others, we don't recognize immediately as remarkable. And, since I write this blog about all kinds of things, you could say my remarks make a lot of thing remarkable.

Have you ever looked at the word "remarkable?" The "k" just makes it stand out. It also is easy to type. So, I like it.

Remarkable.

Much easier to type than xylophone. But, then, I am not sure we'd be remarking about xylophones on this blog.

[ed note - we are sending the writer to the store. Maybe he'll get to the point when he gets back...]

It is actually possible the word I am looking for is "absurd." But, first some background. There are standards for sizing eggs and we have a simple scale, aptly shaped like a chicken, to measure these weights should we want to size the eggs for whatever reason. Most of the eggs we harvest would rate from large to extra large (and beyond).

One of our smaller eggs

This is a little bigger than average

As is this - it should still fit in a carton well enough to deliver to a customer

At this point, we should mention that it is not uncommon to have eggs that top out this scale. And, we have had a few eggs that we thought were ridiculously large. It doesn't happen very often, but we will get an egg that will get our attention because it is a good bit bigger than the rest.

I should also mention a joke I heard on an older British TV show (Good Neighbors).

"The Ooo Aaaa Bird is so called because it lays square eggs."

I think this one liner is funny. Tammy is not as fond of it. Alas, we can't have it all.

The Ooo Aaa Bird has taken up residence in our laying flock. She has apparently rounded off the corners, but the size of this egg still had to make the whole laying process a bit of an adventure.

The scale is useless in this case.

I thought I might take the eggs and put them in order of size so you could get a good feel for the enormity of this one. The first egg on the left is the 'large' egg. The second from the right is another very large egg we just picked up. It would normally get our attention, but is not nearly as ...um... remarkable... as the egg in question.

From large, to extra large, to huge.... to OoooooAaaaaaaaaaaa!

Of course, we had to try and put it into an egg carton.

Ok, that egg isn't getting packed in a carton for delivery...

And, so, this egg was relegated to the carton in the door of our own refrigerator. This is where the big eggs and misfit eggs go to become our breakfast, or bread....etc.

Bets on how many yolks are in that egg?

There you have it. The Oooo Aaaa! Bird is at the Genuine Faux Farm. What will it do next? We don't know, but we're considering trying to figure out which bird it is and offer it an icepack to sit on for a while.